About Us

About Starry Associates, Inc.

Headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, Starry Associates, Inc. (Starry) is a quality-first provider of information technology (IT), health IT services, financial and program management solutions to federal agencies and enterprise clients. With over 36 years of experience, our clients rely on Starry to deliver a powerful blend of business, technology and analytical know-how to develop, operate, manage and maintain mission-critical systems and processes. Visit us at www.starry-associates.com and experience The Starry Way®.

About CMMI® Institute

CMMI Institute (cmmiinstitute.com) is the global leader in the advancement of best practices in people, process, and technology. The Institute provides the tools and support for organizations to benchmark their capabilities and build maturity by comparing their operations to best practices and identifying performance gaps. For over 25 years, thousands of high-performing organizations in a variety of industries, including aerospace, finance, healthcare, software, defense, transportation, and telecommunications, have improved their performance and earned a CMMI maturity level rating and proved they are capable business partners and suppliers.

Starry is an equal opportunity employer.

Executive Team

Sara Z. Starry Founder & President

Sara Z. Starry is the founder and President at Starry Associates, Inc. Since the Company’s establishment in 1982, Ms. Starry has provided leadership, strategic direction and fostered expansion and growth across all company business sectors, programs, and initiatives.

With over 38 years of business and technology expertise, Ms. Starry started her career designing and programming applications. Since then, she has directed and provided substantive effort on projects throughout the Federal government, playing key roles in the successful implementation and support of some of the largest and most complex integrated Federal accounting systems, including the DHHS Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System (HIGLAS) and DHHS Program Support Center’s Unified Financial Management System (UFMS). Ms. Starry’s and her company’s federal business portfolio also includes complex system design, business process reengineering, implementation support, full system lifecycle support, system methodology documentation, business operations, subject matter expertise, and project management leadership for financial system and administrative support projects.

Ms. Starry is a certified Program Management Professional (PMP) and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology, with a minor in Information Systems, from the University of Maryland.

Tony Syntax Managing Director

As Managing Director of Starry Associates for nearly 20 years, Tony Syntax is responsible for management and oversight of Starry’s major corporate functions. Mr. Syntax participates in business development efforts, assists in developing and executing corporate strategy and provides executive oversight of several key Starry contracts.

Mr. Syntax has over 40 years of experience in local, state, and federal government as an employee and as a contractor, having worked for large and small businesses providing IT, budget, financial system, and acquisition and contracts support to government agencies (e.g., Navy, DISA, NASA, State of Maryland, Montgomery, and PG Counties). As a federal employee, he supported the Office of Personnel Management where he was responsible for OPM’s IT budget and key contracts, from solicitation through selection and execution. Mr. Syntax served on the Maryland Governor’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, overseeing U.S. Department of Justice block grant and discretionary grant funds. For the State of Maryland, he drafted legislation, that was signed into law, governing the dissemination of criminal justice history information.

Mr. Syntax holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing/Advertising from the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, CT, and a Master of Science degree in Technology Management/Operations Research from the American University in Washington, D.C.

Lloyd A. Farmer Senior Vice President, Client Services & Delivery

As SVP for Client Services and Delivery, Lloyd Farmer brings to Starry Associates over 29 years’ experience providing consulting services – including 27 years exclusively supporting the Federal government in delivery, management, and executive roles.

Prior to joining Starry Associates in 2016, Mr. Farmer served as Executive Vice President for a large Federal contractor, with whom he worked for over 22 years. In this role, Mr. Farmer was key in establishing a robust federal financial and administrative management practice, which provides a wide range of business, technical and program management services to over fifteen agencies, bureaus, and commissions (across the civilian, defense and intel sectors), and has realized over $350 million in direct contract services revenue. This practice began with a team of ten staff members on two projects and has grown to over 300 professionals providing expertise that includes testing/IV&V, accounting, reporting, audit remediation and internal controls support, budget development and execution, program management and system implementation/O&M services.

Mr. Farmer holds a Masters in Management Information Systems from the University of Maryland and a Bachelors in History and Information Science from University of Pittsburgh. He plays an active role in the Association of Government Accountants (AGA), including serving as Director of Corporate Sponsorship for the Washington, D.C. Chapter.

Prior to joining Starry Associates, Mr. Weiner served as a Vice President of Corporate Business Development for a large Federal contractor, and Director of Consulting Services with another large Federal contractor. In these roles, he led more than a dozen successful financial system modernization and support programs for federal departments and agencies. His business development activities resulted in numerous contract and task wins worth over $500 million in services and software revenue. Mr. Weiner possesses knowledge of Federal financial management and accounting practices, regulations, and procedures as well as significant program, project, and quality management expertise. He has experience in leading a large and diverse workforce and building relationships among business partners and government leaders, including those at operational, technical, and executive levels.

Mr. Weiner holds a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from St. Joseph’s University and a Masters in Government Administration from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a PMP, CGFM, plays active roles in professional organizations such as AGA, ACT-IAC and NVTC, and serves on the fundraising/leadership board of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Washington, DC Chapter.

John Z. Hinkson Senior Vice President Information Technology

As SVP for Information Technology, John Hinkson brings to Starry Associates over 27 years’ of business and technology expertise, starting his career designing and programming IT applications.

Prior to joining Starry Associates, Mr. Hinkson served as Executive Vice President for a large Federal contractor, with whom he worked for over 20 years. In this role, he was responsible for overseeing the operations of the Financial and Administrative Systems (FAS) sector. The FAS sector provides a wide variety of financial, administrative, project management and IT services to agencies and clients such as the FBI, NIH, FAA, NIST, EPA, PWC and USDA. Mr. Hinkson provided project direction and subject matter expertise in the areas of client relationships, issue resolution, subcontract relationships, contractual relationships, and human resources. He was responsible for over 170 consultants and managers, assisting them with the successful completion of project assignments and implementations.

Mr. Hinkson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Mr. Hinkson is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and ITIL certified.

Clients and Partners

Department of Justice / Federal Bureau of Investigation

Budget Formulation, Execution, Reporting and Analysis

Travel and Invoicing Support Services

Financial and Programmatic Reporting, Analysis, and Process Development

Department of Homeland Security / Secret Service

Department of Commerce / National Institute of Standards and Technology

End-to-End Business System Support, Operations & Maintenance (O&M)

Integration and Web Design, Development & Sustainment

Business Analytics, Financial Management, eTravel and Accounting Support

British Telecom Federal

Federal Government-wide Telecom Offering Partnership

Development of Integrated Oracle Billing/Accounting System

Technical Analysis, Design and Support

CSRA

Strategic Teaming Partner

Oracle Application and Integration Services

CMS/HIGLAS Hosting, Operations, and Maintenance

PWC

Strategic Teaming Partner

Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE) and Reporting Services

System Integration, Alternatives Analysis and Assessment

Department of Health & Human Services / Office of the CFO

Consolidated Financial Reporting

Program Management and Analysis Services

Financial and HR Services, Analysis, and System Assessment/Operations PMO

Testimonials

Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)

This year has been one of great success for the Program Support Center, starting with breaking ground here in Salt Lake City late last fall and continuing with the establishing of operations in Transportation Services’ five core business areas: charge cards, travel, transit, policy, and business administration. This would not have happened without the Starry Team. As we progress into the new year together, we’ll continue to grow and expand operations by focusing on quality. We will face more challenges together, but we’re confident that with the Starry family’s support we’ll have another successful year.

Systems Accounting Branch Division of Financial Operations, FMS, PSC

Starry Associates staff feels as though they are a part of the PSC family and treat all issues and projects as if they were the primary stakeholder in success. In turn, this has led to high levels of customer satisfaction among PSC and its internal and external customers.

Starry Associates has never failed to deliver to the satisfaction of the PSC and, in many cases, at a high quality that is above and beyond what was expected. All staff members take ownership over their assigned processes and projects and deliver at consistent high levels.

Starry Associates is in it with you for the long run. Your success is their success.

I worked with Starry Associates for the past 20 years as a Federal System Supervisor and now as the President of my own company. They hired top notch employees, who not only have the experience in technical and development aspects of your project but the operational knowledge that lead to an effective and efficient business flow.

Henry LeachPresident HLL Inc

Certifications & Affiliations

Our Company

Our People

Case Studies

Click on a case study below to read more about it.

Federal Purchase Card Management

Challenge:

A Federal government organization was having problems reconciling its government purchase card (p-cards) purchases with the bank providing the credit card service. P-cards were issued to authorized individuals of the government facility to do micro-purchases that were typically under $2,500.00.
In addition, this made it difficult to identify purchases that could potentially be fraudulent. Starry Associates recognized that there was a huge void in terms of managing the purchase cards transactions. As a result, internal funds were invested to design and develop commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) that would assist this government agency in managing and auditing its p-card purchases and transactions. The product became know as MACCS®. MACCS® is a web-based, Oracle database, COTS product that offers solutions for invalid purchase tracking, forgotten disputes, credits not received, lost receipts, illegible or incomplete handwritten entries in logbooks, miss-keyed information, unauthorized and unmanaged spending, hard to reconcile invoices, manual entries of funding codes on the invoices, incomplete accounting report late payments to the bank, and the lack of an audit trail.
Issues that arouse from this:

The government health facility could not challenge certain purchases that the bank claimed were made

It was cumbersome for the data to be transferred to the accounting system

The reports on the p-card purchases were inaccurate and lacked the timely representation of the charges

Solution:

Starry Associates identified this as an opportunity to assist the government in providing solutions for these issues. Starry Associates designed and developed a web-based solution so that the cardholders and approvers could manage their purchase transactions from their computer. The MACCS® solution has allowed our client to manage the agency's purchase card transactions and pay the bank invoice timely. Starry Associates has been tasked to add features and to modify MACCS® to accommodate change requests from both the bank and the Government Agency that Starry Associates was contracted.

Benefit:

Within two months after MACCS® was implemented and became operational, the government agency received its return on its investment in rebates for invoices paid to the bank timely. This return on investment, and how Starry Associates implemented the new application, left the government agency highly satisfied with MACCS®. In addition,MACCS® has since received many favorable results from audit assessors regarding how the MACCS® system has managed the procurement card transactions.

Reconciliation/Audit Support

Challenge:

Federal Financial Management systems are being implemented without concern for meeting auditability requirements, which are required.

Solution:

Starry Associates provided Federal financial personnel to take the role of audit support. Starry Associates staff assured sufficient audit trail and reconciliation capability was implemented during the creation of the solution. In support of reconciliation and audits efforts, Starry Associates:

Validated functionality of user logon and function tracking

Researched the data fields which lacked sufficient traceability within the system

Validated the audit trail

Assured that all financial requirements were met

Provided reconcilable reports for audit requests

Developed a strategy for application integrity which validated that all processes ran successfully with the expected outcomes

Developed a strategy for system (data) integrity which validated that all interface files processed successfully with sufficient tracking of errors at all control points

Developed a strategy for financial integrity that reconciled all records in the subledgers, and from the subledgers to the General Ledger

Provided operations support to assure the application, system, and financial integrity was maintained each day

Benefit:

Due to the above efforts, the Federal financial management system produced processes and reports that successfully passed the audit and reconciliation requirements of a SAS70 and financial audit. In addition, the legacy systems received a clean audit opinion. The Starry Associates staff is currently working with the implementation of a new financial management system and is working with the client to achieve the same goal.

Disparate System Review

Challenge:

Some of our clients have a multitude of disparate financial-based systems that have been approved for consolidation as well as financial software upgrade.

Solution:

Starry Associates, has performed in-depth system analysis of the disparate systems for our clients. The research has included:

Business processes related to each of the disparate systems

Data fields within the systems software

Definition of challenges in consolidating the systems and upgrading the financial software

Benefit:

The result is a complete analysis and mapping document of the systems and financial software within six months. Starry Associates provided the requirements and definition of the system consolidation as well as the design document for the new upgraded system and financial software. The six month turnaround on the analysis surpassed the expectation of the client.

Solution Providers

Challenge:

Our client's staff is experiencing lengthy system run-time processes which are impeding the staffs work efficiency.

Solution:

Starry Associates is known for providing solutions. Starry Associates provides simple, cost-effective solutions for our client's dynamic challenges. Our success is based upon the following components:

Strategies

Skill Sets

Solutions

Structures

Systems

Benefit:

The result is a complete analysis and mapping document of the systems and financial software within six months. Starry Associates provided the requirements and definition of the system consolidation as well as the design document for the new upgraded system and financial software. The six month turnaround on the analysis surpassed the expectation of the client.

Excellent IT Service Providers

Challenge:

A Federal organization was in the process of transitioning their Federal financial accounting system from the legacy accounting system to an Oracle Federal Financial solution. The legacy financial system remains a critical system for this Federal organization for its financial and accounting operations, as well as the ability to generate its financial statements. In addition, there was another firm responsible for performing the software maintenance for the legacy accounting system. The Federal organization had problems with the type of support that was being provided by the support firm. Some of the support issues were involving the maintenance, where the maintenance changes were slow, and often late in being implemented, deficiencies in proper documentation of the programs, and most importantly the contracted services were not responsive to the needs of the client/customer.

Solution:

Starry Associates re-competed for the contract and was awarded the contract to continue the software maintenance support. The awarded contract was due in part to Starry Associates knowledge and expertise in financial and accounting systems. Starry Associates was able to quickly assign resources that have extremely strong technical backgrounds in IDMS-R database and COBOL that understand the functionality of the system. In addition, the technical resources worked with the U.S. financial accounting staff analysts to properly interpret what had to be done to satisfy the diverse change requirements.

Benefit:

Starry Associates staff members were able to effectively support the client by providing high quality work which assisted the client in meeting their deadlines. Our staff made the transition seamless from the former software support contractor, who had been their sole support for approximately 10 years, in less than 30 days time.Starry Associates has since been contracted to help the client in its conversion to the Oracle Federal Financials solution due to the success of a similar project. Our company is known throughout the agency and the Departments as a partner who works with their clients to accomplish their goals and successes.

Fleet Management Solution Providers

Challenge:

Starry Associates was contracted to upgrade the TaskForce&trade, PartsForce&trade, and PropertyForce&trade fleet, parts, and property management software from a HP 3000 system to the PC/Network version for the county level government in the mid-west. The reason for this conversion was planned obsolescence; Hewlett-Packard was no longer going to support the HP 3000 hardware or software.
In addition, this made it difficult to identify purchases that could potentially be fraudulent. Starry Associates recognized that there was a huge void in terms of managing the purchase cards transactions. As a result, internal funds were invested to design and develop commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) that would assist this government agency in managing and auditing its p-card purchases and transactions. The product became know as MACCS®. MACCS® is a web-based, Oracle database, COTS product that offers solutions for invalid purchase tracking, forgotten disputes, credits not received, lost receipts, illegible or incomplete handwritten entries in logbooks, miss-keyed information, unauthorized and unmanaged spending, hard to reconcile invoices, manual entries of funding codes on the invoices, incomplete accounting report late payments to the bank, and the lack of an audit trail. A few of the challenges were:

Data Conversion from old legacy software to new software

Eliminate erroneous data prior to data conversion to new system

No disruption to current business workflow processes

Project time line - had to be completed within five months of the scheduled start date

This was to be an integrated turnkey solution with new hardware, operating system, and security software

Solution:

Starry Associates met with the county project manager and fleet staff to jointly develop a strategy, and a plan for success. A strategy, project plan, and work breakdown structure was developed. The Starry Associates team as well as the client team worked together collaboratively in the planning and implementation of this effort. The HP 9000 system was selected as the new successor, also selected was a UNIX operating system and Symantec security software. The Oracle database was to be housed on the new HP 9000 system and was going to be the primary repository for the fleet management software. Starry Associates with the client planned the conversion of the legacy database and prepared the data for conversion. Starry Associate's team reviewed the data and performed the initial data conversion at the Starry Associates facility. Starry Associates conducted several levels of testing throughout the process to ensure system operational integrity. After successful testing, Starry Associates installed the software application at the client facility. In addition, Starry Associates had trained the client staff a week prior of the "go-live" date so that the training would be effective for the employees come the following Monday morning when the system went "live".

Benefit:

Starry Associates was dedicated to making the project a success and their client successful. The weekend conversion, 48 hour conversion, was a success with the entire system being fully operational on Monday morning. The county's fleet was ranked 6th by the Utility Fleet Management of the top ten best managed fleets in North America in 2004.

Functional Federal Accounting Subject Matter Expertise

Challenge:

All Federal government agencies Several clients of Starry Associates are experiencing the difficult challenges of transitioning their legacy financial systems. This transition or change can be difficult in and of itself if not managed properly. To change from one system to another system involves several aspects; one aspect being how people will interact with the new system - primarily new GUI interfaces, for this will impact how they do business and how effective they will be in accomplishing their daily tasks. Starry Associates was approached by one of their clients who were experiencing such an issue. The system integrator employed by this Government organization did not understand the organizations Federal financial and accounting functions, as well as the specific business processes associated to the system, which would have an adverse impact to some affiliated Government organizations. The integrators were having a difficult time understanding the users' requirements which meant that they would not be able to implement a successful solution. This lack of understanding had frustrated this Government organization in the past when processes did not meet business needs and implementation times exceeded project timelines - resulting in cost over-runs.

Solution:

Starry Associates provides functional and technical staff members that are knowledgeable in both federal and financial management systems and the ability to implement these large complex systems successfully. Our subject matter experts include retired Federal employees who understand these systems well. We assign highly qualified individuals into each position of a project team to address the dynamic and complex issues of these large financial systems.

Benefit:

Starry Associates has supported the system integrators and agencies that have hired new employees to provide the SME support required. When Starry Associates has been involved with a conversion project, the client has saved millions of dollars or costly delays.

Periodic Closing Processes for Federal Financial Management Systems

History:

For Federal government agencies, the year-end closing of the accounting books begins shortly after the end of the Federal government's fiscal year. All Federal government agencies have to perform a final reconciliation before the books are closed and before new books can be opened for the new fiscal year. This process can take up to three months.

Challenge:

A number of our clients require assistance with operating and maintaining their financial management systems. Some specific issues faced by our clients were the periodic processing, closing, and reporting requirements. It was discovered that the monthly closing and reporting processes were slowly gaining time as more demand was placed on their systems

Solution:

Starry Associates expertise in the periodic processing requirements and financial management systems provided the Federal client with the following solutions:

Optimized and well-tuned the closing procedure.

Continued tuning the software to improve its performance.

Addressed the business processes associated with the month-end and year-end closing to reduce the effort involved in reconciliation.

Benefit:

The main system closed the month-end and quarter-end within 24 hours, and year-end within 48 hours. For the new Federal financial management system, Starry Associates had improved the timeframe provided by the system integrator by 300% for month-end, and quarter-end was closed within the same 24-hour time period. This new optimized and well-tuned closing procedure was achieved by less than half of the number of individuals, representing a more than 50% cut in cost. For the closing of FY 2006, it took less than 36 hours, a phenomenal accomplishment!

Federal Financial Management Systems

Challenge:

The Federal Financial Management Systems for civilian Federal Government agencies are being implemented without sufficient federal experience. The integrator firms that have been contracted to implement these Oracle Federal Financials systems have lacked the technical skill sets as well as the functional skill sets to successfully implement the solutions and meet the clients' requirements. Unfortunately, millions of dollars are being spent on these complex systems without significant return on investment and the clients' deliverables being met.

Solution:

Starry Associates provides functional and technical staff members that are knowledgeable in both federal and financial management systems and the ability to implement these large complex systems successfully. Our subject matter experts include retired Federal employees who understand these systems well. We assign highly qualified individuals into each position of a project team to address the dynamic and complex issues of these large financial systems. Our experience spans several fields from mainframes to web-based applications, as well as IT system developers to financial management expertise. This variety of skill sets provides the depth and breadth that is needed to implement and support a federal financial management solution - successfully.

Benefit:

The result has exceeded the Federal client's satisfaction in the transition, implementation, and operation of the financial systems. Starry Associates has been able to meet the challenge with the right people, with the right skill sets, to assist our clients in these major initiatives. We have been able to assist the Federal clients in meeting their deadlines, and and reducing overall budgeted dollars.

e-Travel Implementation

Challenge:

All Federal government agencies have been directed by the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to implement a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic travel solution.

Solution:

Starry Associates was contracted by a government agency to investigate their legacy travel system and interfaces into the accounting system. From the analysis, Starry Associates then developed and implemented the "Back Office" interfaces into the new e-Travel system. Once the e-Travel System was in a production state, Starry Associates derived a crosswalk process that was applied to the financial management system. This allowed for the transparent conversion of data, and an immediate "go-live" support of the e-Travel system upon completion of the financial management system conversion. In addition, Starry Associates completed the project ahead of schedule, including program changes and testing, and held to a quality process of 100% reconciliation of the values within the system. In addition, Starry Associates passed all of the audit and process reviews (SAS70 and OMB's A-123) requirements.

Benefit:

To date, Starry Associates has assisted this government agency in successfully going through two major conversions of data and financial accounting transactions regarding the eTravel system. In addition, this successful conversion allowed this government agency to become established as the Center for Excellence for the enterprise-wide e-Travel solution.

Gov.net® Report Distribution Tool

Challenge:

Printed reports had to be manually parsed out and separated from the bulk print jobs, which was time consuming. Reports were distributed manually by mail cart or mailed to the department due to geographic location, which inevitably delayed the overall process.
United States Federal organization was challenged with two major issues as a service support center:

Financial staff not being able to obtain financial and accounting reports on a timely basis

Large commercial printers that printed multiple reports contiguously on perforated paper leading to high, bulky, unmanageable stacks of paper.

Printed reports had to be manually parsed out and separated from the bulk print jobs, which was time consuming. Reports were distributed manually by mail cart or mailed to the department due to geographic location, which inevitably delayed the overall process.

Solution:

Starry Associates expertise in the periodic processing requirements and financial management systems provided the Federal client with the following solutions:

Oracle Federal Financials Project Conversion

Starry's web-enabled system addresses the need for a data and report repository offering a complete, accurate, and customized inquiries and reports. Without compromising security, GovNet-NG®'s report repository allows client users to access previously downloaded reports from a proprietary server and search, print, or download reports to their PC in real-time fashion. The benefits of GovNet-NG® are focused on eliminating the time and money consuming aspects of traditional financial report creation and distribution. GovNet-NG®'s data repository provides a configurable infrastructure to implement archive and production data storage. The system provides read-only, inquiry functionality into the data marts

Challenge:

A large U.S. Government service support center was faced with a critical issue to convert all data from a legacy accounting system, including associated programs, interfaces, feeder systems, and processes that generated the data at a departmental level with 100% accuracy and complete reconciliation.This would be one of the largest Federal financial system conversions in this country.

Solution:

The solution involved utilizing the skills and experience of Starry Associates staff as well as the experience of the Federal financial employees.

Benefit:

The conversion of the Federal financial legacy system, and its associated interfaces and ancillary feeder systems, was completed on time and significantly under projected budget. The 99.99% accuracy of reconciled values and 100% of data integrity goals were met. It was noted that this was the first time in the U.S. Government service support center group's history that such accuracy and integrity had ever been accomplished.

Gov.net® to the Next Generation – Data and Report Repository

Challenge:

The same United States Federal organization was later challenged with the need to expand Gov.net® as a service support center to accomplish the following requirements as they moved from the legacy accounting system to an Oracle Federal Financials implementation:

Maintain a repository of the legacy accounting system reports for historical purposes

Reporting archive solution for additional feeder systems as access to the mainframe was being shutdown

Provide a report repository for the Oracle Federal Financial reports to maintain the periodic reports and distribute to the user community

A web based application that would allow the user to print their reports to a local or networked printer

Establish a data archive to house the legacy financial system as access to the mainframe was being shutdown

The ability to limit the user's access to the master data repository allowing the user only data that was required to do their job

Solution:

Starry Associates identified this as an opportunity to expand the Gov.net® solution to the next generation, GovNet-NG® a complete data and report repository. Starry Associates extended the web-based solution architecture so that the users could access the reports from various systems and the legacy data archives from their computer. Starry Associates developed the GovNet-NG® system, which became a full data repository including data warehouse and report archives. GovNet-NG® maintains the substantial security measures to ensure that each user gains access to only a portion of the data that they are given authorization to view, which was now upgraded to the Oracle Federal Financials user identifications. Starry Associates provided additional training for the users and instructed the trainers so they can continue to perform the training for new users.

Benefit:

Benefit: GovNet-NG® now provides the Federal service support center with the following capabilities:

Supports the data archive from the legacy system (14 years of documents, approximately 18 million archived documents)

Web based application

Saved the government agency over 19 million dollars from inception to implementation (amount determined by prices provided for the same report and data warehouse)

Delivered within 1 year as a full production system (other implementations of the same functionality was estimated at three plus years)

System expanded by 66% - transparent to user organizations

Expanded to support production reporting needs

Production system resources not required for multiple executions of the canned report cycles reporting

Mid-Year Conversion into Oracle Federal Financials Implementations

Challenge:

All Federal government agencies have been directed by the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to implement a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic travel solution.

Solution:

Starry Associates was contracted by a government agency to investigate their legacy travel system and interfaces into the accounting system. From the analysis, Starry Associates then developed and implemented the "Back Office" interfaces into the new e-Travel system. Once the e-Travel System was in a production state, Starry Associates derived a crosswalk process that was applied to the financial management system. This allowed for the transparent conversion of data, and an immediate "go-live" support of the e-Travel system upon completion of the financial management system conversion. In addition, Starry Associates completed the project ahead of schedule, including program changes and testing, and held to a quality process of 100% reconciliation of the values within the system. In addition, Starry Associates passed all of the audit and process reviews (SAS70 and OMB's A-123) requirements.

Benefit:

Starry Associates was able to assist the Federal service support center in successfully bringing the Agency's systems into production on time (completed within 5 month timeline) and within budget. In addition, the Agency was brought up with no errors, transparent to the end users of the system,and was fully reconciled, which met the required deliverables of the project plan. Starry Associates was able to support our client so that they met their commitment to supporting the Agency. This also will improve the Federal service support center's ability to incorporate additional clients in building out their accounting system as a Centers of Excellence. Since then, this conversion has passed all audit requirements.